The Shepard Tone Effect is a fairly unique studio effect / modulation created by the magical intersection of octaves and resonant filters - it takes its name from cognitive scientist Roger Shepard who specialised in optical illusions. Wikipedia describes it as a musical illusion where a sound is formed consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves. When played with the bass pitch of the tone moving upward or downward, it is referred to as the Shepard scale. This creates the ...

Now definitively defined as a Pedal-format Modular Synthesizer, Sequencer and Multi-Effects unit. The control interface consists of a small OLED screen accompanied by a grid of 40 (5x8) 7-coloured LED backlit soft-touch buttons, 4 further control buttons for Secondary Functions, and a large Menu scroll dial. There are 3 footswitches to activate live playback and scroll through presets.

Essentially you have a building-block interface-led hybrid-modular-synthesiser where you chain ...

Everyone on this site should know by now that I’m a huge Boss fan and that in my 250 or so strong pedal collection, Boss currently contributes the largest number or 16. There are always a few Boss pedals I have on my rolling wishlist, and while I only have 4 semi-permanent Boss fixtures in my pedal-chain right now - the Keeley Freak Fuzz modded Blues Driver, Alchemy Audio modded GE-7 and NS-2, and of course the Boss MD-500 - I frequently rotate in other Bosses into other slots of the ...

So some of you know that I declared 2019 would be my ’Year of Glitch’ following on from last year’s ’Year of Fuzz’. I had a longlist of 16 of the Best Glitch Effects Pedals - and indicated which of those were my preferred options. I very soon had 4 of those pedals in my collection - in order of arrival - King of Gear Mini Glitch, Montreal Assembly Count to Five, Drolo Molecular Disruptor V3, and the gold-face Pladask Elektrisk Fabrikat. There are a few missing off ...

I’m sort of getting to full saturation point with drive, distortion and fuzz pedals - with my ’2018 Year of Fuzz’ coming to a close it’s time to direct my attentions slightly further afield and in new directions. I’ve always had an interest in sort of randomised textural effects - which means that my next significant area of interest will be that roughly defined by the category of ’Glitch’.

I always expect to be excited by the new prospects introduced at Summer NAMM, but it can be somewhat antic-climactic, particularly compared to this year’s very formidable Winter NAMM show. Several pedals that were announced there are still alas somewhat in the ether. I was expecting to see updates of the Empress Zoia and the Keeley Stereo Tape Delay pedal - but those were not forthcoming, which most probably means some production delays - I certainly can’t imagine the Zoia is going ...

Pedals are still my favourite guitar-related field - nothing yields the same degree of instant satisfaction as a smart pedal, and there were quite a number of intriguing ones on offer in this year’s crop. I started aiming for 20, then chopped and changed quite a bit - to end up with this current selection of 21. All of these hold significant interest for me and would be / are being considered for inclusion within my pedal chain and compact and mini collections - for which I currently have...

The NAMM promo videos are coming thick and fast now, and the second one below sees Pigtronix announce the arrival of the slightly quirkier twin brother to the Mothership 2 - the Ringmaster as the name suggests combines Ring Modulation into the synth mix, but it does a lot more besides - including - Analog Harmonizing, LFO Modulation, Sample & Hold Modulation, Pitch Tracking Ring Modulation and Pitch Tracking Tremolo.

For me this has been a pretty bumper year for new pedals. Some of the much hyped ones are only fairly recently in distribution - like the much delayed Source Audio Ventris Dual Reverb, while we’re still waiting for the Pigtronix Mothership 2 to reach these shores. There were also many surprises throughout the year - like Boss’s resurgence and the dramatic increase in dual-effect and dual-footswitch pedals. We had the dual serendipitous launches of two very functionally similar ...

Throughout this year I’ve covered most of the typical pedal type categories - probably somewhere around 25-30 types overall, yet there are many more oddities that sit outside the scope of what’s regular or even marginally mainstream. Certain categories I haven’t covered yet include various utility pedals like ABY types - I may tackle those eventually, but certainly not this year. Yet I still like to spice things up every now and again with pedals that are often quite ...